Austin's Waterloo

Taking a Walk along Waller

It's a creek, it's a park, it's a drainage ditch, it's an eyesore.
It's a
sidewalk, a hike-and-bike, a shopping arcade, and a shooting gallery.
It's a
habitat for wild life of both the human and animal variety. It's an
amenity, an
obstacle, and a dangerous threat. It's the Convention Center's front
yard,
Memorial Stadium's side yard, and maybe your backyard.

As long as there's been an Austin, the six miles of Waller Creek have
been
part of it, the only one of our many waterways entitled to that claim.
It is,
indeed, named for Austin's first mayor and city planner, Edwin Waller,
whose
1839 grid for the infant Capitol City extended to Shoal Creek and the
Colorado
but past Waller Creek to the present-day I-35. Its banks cradled the
graves of
Austin's first official dead - two of Waller's surveyors, scalped by
the
Indians. (Their burial place became the initial city cemetery, under
today's
Waller Creek Centre, née Avante Plaza.) Its first white
landholder was
the Father of Austin, Mirabeau Lamar, second president of the Republic,
who
farmed 68 acres around what is now Eastwoods Park. He also got driven
out by
the Indians, who had a permanent encampment near a spring at the end of
43rd
Street.

Back then, when things were simpler, Waller Creek's public identity
was
simpler as well: It was in the way. It had its uses - carrying away
pre-industrial wastes from slaughterhouses, a cannon foundry, and the
stables
of the Republic's cavalry and draft horses, and watering the estates of
Lamar
and other early Austin gentry in what came to be Hyde Park. But
otherwise,
since everything of interest came to Austin from the east, Waller Creek
lived
to be jumped, and the ways it was jumped helped shape today's central
city.

Austin's first foot, carriage, and railroad bridges were all built
over the
creek near Pine and Pecan (today's Fifth and Sixth) Streets, making
those
streets the major east-west downtown thoroughfares. Before the bridges,
people
and things either rode upriver by barge to the Stone Docks, at the foot
of
Trinity Street, or got dropped on Waller Creek's banks. In this way
East Austin
was born - when the French Legation was built, there was no way to haul
stone
and timber across the creek, so it went up on the Eastside. It wasn't
until
1882, when the State Capitol was built, that a high stone bridge over
the creek
at 12th Street was built for this same purpose - it's still there, one
of the
city's oldest public structures.

Today, Austin's extensive creek system underlies our self-concept
as a unique
environmental masterpiece, and most of our waterways are flanked by
parkland to
keep the city and its stresses at bay. This consciousness is not as
recent as
one might think, however; the city's 1928 masterplan was the birthplace
of the
Shoal Creek Greenbelt - our first watershed park - but it was already
too late
for Waller Creek, which had been thoroughly urbanized and largely
defiled. The
northern reaches were still attractive, running through the gracious
gardens of
people like J. Frank Dobie and Elizabet Ney. But Lower Waller Creek had
become
an eyesore, littered with dumps, swamps, and shotgun shacks, even then
a haven
for the seedy, derelict, and criminal. (As a young congressman, Lyndon
Johnson
called for cleaning up the "hotbeds of crime" in Waller Creek's
shantytowns.)

The population density of the development around Waller Creek
watershed, more
than the actual volume of water it carries (less than half that of
Shoal
Creek), made its basin prone to dangerous and frustrating floods.
Drainage
across downtown, from the Capitol southwest to Sixth Street, was so
heavy it
could float a boat (the flow path is marked on some old maps as a
separate
creek), while on the east side of the creek, runoff from the Robertson
Hill
area washed out East Avenue with alarming frequency. Combined with the
flow
from upstream, the resulting torrents could be devastating, with a 1913
deluge
claiming many homes and at least two dozen lives.

The superficials are different today, but the story is much the same
- Waller
Creek languishes fitfully, breeding rats, sheltering crack dealers, and
flooding its banks every time it rains. Largely beyond the realm of
environmental preservation, the creek's fortunes have instead been
yoked to
downtown revitalization. The what-to-do-with-Waller question - a
greenbelt
park? a pedestrian thoroughfare? a commercial drag a la San
Antonio's
Riverwalk? - has been tackled several times over the past two decades,
with
creek improvements drafted, and sometimes built, by an all-star cast of
Austin
architects including Sinclair Black, Alan Taniguchi, Tom Shefelman, and
David
Graeber.

The latest of those junctures
is right now, as the Austin Parks and Recreation Department (PARD)
embarks on a
$1.6 million project - bankrolled with federal funds - to complete and
rehabilitate the Waller Creek Hike and Bike Trail, first built out in
the early
1980s with a previous federal allotment but left unfinished and since
severely
damaged. "Our primary task is to fill in missing links, from Waterloo
Park
[between 12th and 15th Streets] all the way to Town Lake," says PARD's
Stuart
Strong. "A secondary objective is to add more amenities - lighting,
landscaping, benches, and especially signage. Right now, unless you
know the
terrain, you're not sure where you are - we want people using the trail
to know
where to get off for Sixth Street."

At the same time, the city's Public Works Department, with funds
transferred
from the drainage utility, is beginning a comprehensive flood-control
study of
Waller Creek, aiming to not only avert destruction but to protect the
creek's
water quality, which is pretty rank (no less an authority than city
Councilmember Brigid Shea describes it as "revolting"), and to manage
the creek
flow in a way that supports future developments like a "creekwalk." "We
want to
figure out what kind of commercial district or urban amenity Waller
Creek could
be," says Public Works' Tom Hegemier, "if we didn't have all the
flooding
problems."

The two projects, though separate and on different timelines, are
being
coordinated - the teams overseeing each share members - which should be
comforting to those who worked on the previous Waller Creek makeover in
the
early 1980s. "We included various flood control elements in our master
plan,"
says Tom Shefelman, architect of the existing Waller Creek trail,
"including a
flood bypass tunnel as well as pumping water up from Town Lake to
maintain a
constant level. I guess we all had an image of the San Antonio River in
our
mind's eye." (Variations of both these ideas - a diversion channel and
a
pump-driven recirculation system - keep San Antonio's Riverwalk from
inundating
hordes of fajita-munching conventioneers.)

"But the leadership of PARD at the time decided flood control was not
their
first priority," Shefelman continues, "and there was a price tag they
couldn't
budget with the money we had, so we ended up with part of a
hike-and-bike
trail; we had to keep going up to street level, and we had to abandon
the big
part south of First Street. Where we went down to the creek, we made
some
efforts at erosion control, some effective and some futile." Several of
the
bridges and creekside sections built by Shefelman's team have since
been
destroyed by flood, and it was at his and other urban designers'
prompting that
the development-related objectives were added to the Public Works
study.

As for water quality, it occupies the lowest priority in the study,
since
there are very few obvious solutions, given the almost complete
impervious
cover in parts of the Waller Creek watershed and the multiple entities
- city,
state, university, and numerous private landholders - that own parts of
the
watershed. "Making big improvements is going to be a real challenge,"
Hegemier
says.

The flood-control ideas in Shefelman's master plan - some of which
were
proposed as early as 1968 - will be "looked at real hard" in the Public
Works
study, says Hegemier, who adds that Waller Creek is a much thornier
drainage
problem than Shoal Creek, despite the latter's greater size and flow.
"We know
a whole lot about Shoal Creek because of the Memorial Day flood (in
1981), and
the city owns most of the land along Shoal, which we don't along
Waller," he
explains.

The major strategy in abating Shoal Creek's flood potential has been
to widen
and deepen the channel, which is not really possible along Waller,
since it
flows over bedrock, is relatively narrow and, at least at the lower
end, is
developed right to the water's edge. "We mostly need to figure out what
the
best and most cost-effective solutions are going to be," Hegemier says,
"because we don't have any funding right now for actual improvements.
Hopefully, the report will give us direction; then it's up to the City
Council
to figure out how to fund what needs to be done, or even if they want
to pursue
it."

The current council, with its mix of enviros (one of whom, Shea,
lives along
Waller Creek) and downtown hawks, will probably want to pursue it,
especially
after dropping $1.6 million of Uncle Sam's money on a new hike-and-bike
trail,
and most especially if they want to create a creekwalk. "Without flood
control
being resolved, I don't know what they could hope to do along the
creek," says
Sheraton Austin manager Jack Highsmith, whose Sixth Street hotel (along
with
its twin, though separately owned, office building) overhangs the
creek. "They
have a great asset, but it would take a lot of money to develop."

Flood control could also
change the complexion of the Convention Center, which - ever since
discussions
focused on its current site - was supposed to open up to Waller Creek,
with
patrons in some plans entering the Center by crossing a footbridge
(from
parking structures) over the creek. When the Center was actually built,
though,
its lower levels had to be above the 100-year flood level, which has
made the
Waller Creek facade - the most, arguably the only, attractive part of
the place
- largely invisible and certainly inaccessible. The PARD grant project
comprises much intended work - both by the Center's District Design
Guidelines
and the subsequent Regional Urban Development Team (R/UDAT)
downtown-renewal
plan - to be completed as part of the Convention Center construction
project.

For now, though, the flood-damaged trail is more a physical
challenge than a
pathway to the Convention Center. That - along with its adjacency to
the police
headquarters, jail, Salvation Army, and the like - has made it a
popular
hangout for Austin's underclass. If you are hankering to see used
needles,
inebriates sleeping on abandoned mattresses, and tricks being turned
under
bridges, Waller Creek is the place to be - as guests at the Capitol
Marriott
found out recently when Austin police busted and clubbed, at poolside,
a
miscreant whom they'd chased through the creekbed. (The hotel has
posted
notices at the creek's edge discouraging its guests from venturing onto
the
trail.)

"Right now, there's both a perceived and real danger to Waller
Creek," says
Jose Martinez, president of the Austin Downtown Management Organization
(DMO).
"Any improvements, both public and private, should consider this, so
that hotel
guests and others can walk to Town Lake without either physical
interruptions
or fear for their safety." On top of structural changes, though, many
commercial interests along the creek call for a stronger APD presence.
"You
have to do something direct," says Capitol Marriott manager Ron
Paynter. "San
Antonio still has security issues on the Riverwalk, and you can't get
more
improved and developed than that."

With the floods controled, the riffraff cleaned up, and the trail
built
through all the way to Town Lake, Waller Creek could realize its
potential as a
downtown asset. But what kind of asset would it be? The "creekwalk"
idea,
long-running as it is, is very ill-defined, and handicapped by the
fragmented
ownership of the lower creek. "There's been visions for years, but
someone
needs to be the developer who gets this started," says Paynter, who
thinks that
any development below street level will always be unfeasible. "You need
entrepreneurs, you need the availability of money, you need a master
plan. If
you rely on each individual, it will never happen."

The last contender for that role of mastermind, David Graeber, was
attached to
the controversial Texas Riverboat Renaissance project, which proposed
damming
the mouth of Waller Creek and turning it into a boat slip for a
floating
casino. This idea was roundly reviled by many civic leaders, on many
grounds,
not the least of them environmental concerns. Yet there seems to be
consensus
that, although Waller Creek is a surprisingly fertile habitat - one can
see
snakes, herons, owls, crawfish, and nutria in Waterloo Park, along with
the
usual perch, turtles, and lots of riverine flora - there is no way or
reason to
make it pristine. "It was long ago clobbered as a natural waterway,"
says
Shefelman, "and would require demolition and resdesign to change it
back. But
we can have commercial development without throwing away the green
space that's
there now. Having an interaction with the creek should be the priority
of any
development, not just a by-product."

Shefelman may be an optimist for thinking that a fully realized
development of
Waller Creek is going to happen within a mortal lifetime. Many other
observers
feel that, despite the years of dreaming about a new and improved
Waller Creek,
the lack of obvious sources of money and energy will always retard
progress
toward that goal - or at least that the process of reinventing Waller
Creek is
only at its very beginning. "I've been around here for 20 years and
seen lots
of work done on Waller Creek," says the Sheraton's Highsmith, "and I
think
we're still about 100 consultants away."

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